The Bishop and the Speaker

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Monday, May 23, 2022

 

Last year, while Catholic bishops were discussing how to handle pro-abortion politicians, Pope Francis is reported to have said that bishops should be pastoral and work toward a change of their heart, but he added that such people “cannot take communion, because they are out of the community.”

 

I’m not sure that he wanted a high-profile case to be made. But on Friday, he got one. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco announced that he was barring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion in his diocese, where she has her home. “A Catholic legislator who supports procured abortion, after knowing the teaching of the Church, commits a manifestly grave sin which is a cause of most serious scandal to others,” he explained. Pelosi has spent recent weeks advocating strenuously for duplicating in Congress Roe v. Wade’s national legalization of abortion. Historically, she has also tried to defend her politics as consonant with her Catholic faith and has even tried to cite church Fathers to buttress her support for abortion.

 

It’s worth going over the mechanics and meaning of this decision, as many mainstream-media reports are having trouble explaining it. All Catholics are obliged by the teaching of their faith to abstain from Holy Communion if they are in a state of serious sin. Catholics in such a state are to make a sacramental confession and receive absolution before receiving Holy Communion again. This is how Catholics understand and practice St. Paul’s caution in 1 Corinthians 11: “But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”

 

A bishop or priest may intervene to stop such sacrilegious communions if the nature of the sin itself is public and if the church member shows some level of obstinacy in refusing private correction from the pastor or bishop.

 

In his letter explaining the decision to announce this publicly, Cordileone reported that he had spoken with Pelosi about the matter and that her office eventually stopped taking his phone calls. Cordileone cited the instruction of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 2004, who wrote to U.S. bishops:

 

When a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist. When “these precautionary measures have not had their effect,” . . . and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, “the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it.”

 

Some commentators have argued already that this somehow violates the separation of church and state. Hardly: Cordileone has not denied Pelosi the exercise of the office to which the public elected her. He has denied her in the very matter over which he clearly has authority as her bishop.

 

This action was a serious one for Archbishop Cordileone, as it embroils him, concerning church doctrine about the eucharist, in serious controversy. Some Catholic bishops and commentators clearly think that this form of discipline should never be exercised now for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they argue that the public and most church members are too ignorant of the theology described above to understand this form of discipline and that they are likely to take the wrong impression of it or be alienated by such an action. Others argue that imposing this form of discipline only raises more questions. Should it fall upon only those who support abortion? Why not those who support the death penalty, which recent popes have condemned? Why not those who support what the bishops believe to be an unjust war?

 

Those who argue from ignorance do have a point. For at least five decades, Catholic preaching and teaching about the need for confession, about being in a state of grace to properly receive communion, has almost disappeared. Many Catholics do not know what their faith teaches on these points, and so the fine print of canon law is not just unintuitive but foreign to them.

 

But, of course, the proper response to ignorance is correction, and remediating education, not falling further into torpor.

 

There is going to be a temptation by faithful Catholics to defend Archbishop Cordileone’s decision by heaping more and more opprobrium on Nancy Pelosi. Well, I think that in this matter the archbishop needs a defense, but it should take the opposite form.

 

Conscientious Catholics should admit that their sins sometimes exile them from receiving Holy Communion. I’ve spent many Sundays shuffling in the vestibule while my friends received. Given the way the faith has been practiced, I remember some Sundays years ago when I was the only person in a packed church who did not receive. Whether I’ve missed Mass through my own fault or examined myself and found myself guilty of other serious sins: lust, greed, gluttony, or yelling at my readers in the comments section.

 

I’m not a good Catholic, and the sins I confess are a great caution against holding myself out as one. Which is why I’m relieved that we call it “practicing” the faith, as it holds out the idea that, someday, we will get good. In this case, we have to look at the archbishop not as a judge rendering a historic verdict but as referee reminding us of the rules of the game.